Crusade

Every place of worship, every public building, every home was looted until the carts could carry no more. Nothing of any value remained; the city was cleansed of everything with the blood of its people.

Within minutes of the end of the carnage, the Crusaders flocked to the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks for their deliverance. Heaving from their exertions, dripping in their sweat and the still-warm blood of their victims, they knelt in prayer.

We turned away; whichever God they were praying to, it was not our God.

There was one final battle to be fought in the Crusade.

News arrived within a few hours of the slaughter at Jerusalem that Malik al-Afdal, the Vizier of the Caliphate of Cairo, was approaching with a Fatimid army 30,000 strong, landing his force at the port of Ascalon. It had elite Egyptian cavalry at its core and troops from all over the Caliphate: Berbers, Bedouin, Ethiopians and squadrons from the personal bodyguards of all the emirs of the Fatimid cities along the North African coast. It was at least as powerful as any army we had faced in the entire Crusade.

The Princes, emboldened and briefly united by their achievements, decided on yet another unpredictably daring response. They would not sit behind the walls of Jerusalem and wait for the attack; they would ride out and meet it head on. Although their newly purchased horses were less sturdy than their European mounts, the knights could fight on horseback once more and relished the prospect.

We had no stomach for any more fighting of the sort that had come to be the hallmark of Crusader behaviour. Sweyn, Hereward, Adela and Estrith took Harold and headed north to Jaffa with Hugh Percy and an escort of Robert’s men to organize a fleet for our departure from the Holy Land.

Robert and I took advice from the Brethren and wrestled with the dilemma for many hours before deciding that it would be wrong to desert the cause at the moment when its objective had been achieved, no matter how much unnecessary blood had been spilled in doing so.

We reached the vicinity of Ascalon on the evening of the 11th of August. It soon became clear from the reports of our scouts that we had been fortunate and that the audacity of the Princes had worked in our favour once more. Malik al-Afdal had spent the day preparing his army to march on Jerusalem the next morning and then bedded it down for the night. Feeling certain that his quarry would hole up in Jerusalem, he had posted few sentries and made no provision to defend his camp against a surprise attack.

Godfrey of Bouillon led a Council of War, where the decision was quickly taken to rest for only a few hours and then to form up as close to the Fatimid army as possible during the darkest hours of the night, waiting for the first hint of dawn. When there was just enough light to illuminate our path, we would charge, en masse, straight into the Fatimid camp.

When the moment came, Raymond of Toulouse took the right flank, Godfrey of Bouillon the left, with Robert of Flanders, Tancred of Hauteville, Robert and myself in the centre. The first rays of the sun caught the crimson of our flags and war banners before bathing us all in its early morning gleam. With the light radiating behind us in an iridescent glow, and the thunder of our horses booming ever louder, we must have presented a terrifying vision as we fell upon the enemy camp out of the night.

We were outnumbered by at least three to one, but our group of men was the elite residue of an army which itself was the best Europe had to offer when it set out three years earlier. It had survived battle, deprivation and disease and had been forged in incredibly challenging circumstances.

Many were also inspired by mystical relics unearthed by the Crusaders and brought to the battlefield. Raymond of Toulouse carried the Holy Lance, found in Antioch, which was said to be the spear that had been plunged into Christ’s side on the cross. Arnulf of Chocques, the new Patriarch of Jerusalem, held aloft the True Cross, believed to be a piece of Christ’s crucifix, discovered hidden in a silver case in a dingy corner of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Most of the foot soldiers had walked from Jerusalem barefoot, like true pilgrims, and dozens of knights had worn sackcloth on the journey to purge themselves in preparation for the battle. Mixed in equal measures with a voracious greed and a lust for violence, religious zeal had driven these men throughout the Crusade; it was a frightening brew.

Only on the eve of battle did they wear their garments of war — which, to them, represented another form of reverential clothing, because killing infidels was another kind of devotion to God.