15.7. 1099 End of the First Crusade

Between 1096 and 1099, the First Crusade took place at the invitation of Urban II, in which many important lords took part. It ended with the conquest of Jerusalem.

The expedition was led by the brothers Godefroy and Balduin of the Dukes of Lorraine, the Normanthe noblemen Bohemund and Tancred of southern Italy, and the southern French Count Raimond of Toulouse. From Europe, however, a large multitude of commoners also set out, led by the preacher Peter the Hermit, who, after various...the first to enter the Byzantine Empire.

The military actions went quite favourably, although they were prolonged for three years. First, the conquest of Asia Minor, Nicaea, was achieved, opening the way to the Euphrates and Syria. Then followed a difficult journey through difficult terrain before Cilicia. Some of the crusaders then headed for the Euphrates and, after capturing the city of Edessa, established the first crusader state there.The main army headed for Antiochos, which was captured after a long and difficult siege.

When the Crusaders subsequently succeeded against the outnumbered Mosul army, they were able to advance on Jerusalem without much difficulty, which they captured in July 1099 . "The First Crusade may be described as the most successful, for it gave rise to four Crusader states - in addition to the county of Edessa, thethe principalities of Antioch, Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem," write Drahomír Suchánek and Václav Drška in their book Ecclesiastical History: Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

As early as Christmas 1099, the first synod was held in Jerusalem . "At the synod, the papal legate Archbishop of Pisa Dagobert was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem , from which from whom both Bohemund and Gottfried took their territories as fiefs," says Chapters in the History of European Politics.

The settler crusaders, called Franks by Muslims without distinction of nationality, suffered their first major defeat in 1119 in an ill-fated battle known as the Battle of the Bloody Field. Yet the Western Christians also won some important victories, such asfor example, when, again years after the battle, the Kingdom of Jerusalem succeeded in capturing the important port city of Tyros.

"For its conquest did not only affect the Fatima Egyptian Caliphate, whose dominant rulebut also the important emirate of Damascus, which could then trade with otheremirate, which could then trade with other areas in the Mediterranean only through ports," writes David Nicolle in The Second Crusade 1148.

Drahomír Suchánek and Václav Drška, Ecclesiastical History: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Collective of Authors, Chapters in the History of European Politics, David Nicolle in The Second Crusade 1148, http://ancientscripture.blogspot.com/