On Tuesday, June 7, 1099, the Crusaders finally arrived, after much suffering, to the walls of Jerusalem. Many of them cried for joy, as they are now close to liberating the holy city from the Muslims.
Le Point magazine says in a report on the subject that this day, Tuesday, coincides with that anniversary, noting that the Crusader army spent nearly 3 years before it reached its final destination.
She also said that the Crusaders, led by Duke Godefroy de Bouillon, had to fight on their way to Jerusalem, and at last had to pass through Tripoli, Beirut and others before they reached the walls of Jerusalem.
The magazine stated that the number of Christians who besieged the holy city was about 1,500 knights out of 7,000 who left Europe for this task, and only 12,000 of the 20,000 infantry who followed them remained.
The French magazine added that this number was not enough to completely encircle the city, but the leaders of the campaign were distributed north, south and west of the city, however, before starting the attack, they had to find water and food, as the area is desert, nothing to eat and worse than that, there was nothing to drink.
Here, Le Point says that the Crusaders found themselves in a world turned upside down. The besieged people had plenty of water and supplies, while the besiegers lacked everything, to the extent that dozens of them were dying of hunger and thirst.
The invaders had no choice but to climb the walls, and upon their arrival they began to make wooden ladders, and they quickly became impatient, eager to "save Christ" but also to plunder the city, whose walls they stormed on 13 June of that year.
According to the magazine, the Fatimids, who were in control of Jerusalem at the time, did not initially find any difficulty in repelling them, but with the continuation of this situation and the resulting food shortage and in light of the constant quarrels, those besieging Jerusalem became in a desperate situation.
Fortunately for them, ships from Genoa, present-day Italy, arrived at Jaffa with supplies, and this allowed the Crusaders to launch an expedition to Samaria (the mountainous northern part of the West Bank) to bring in the timber needed to build tall towers on wheels.
And the magazine adds: After the Crusaders completed their towers, they attacked the city on July 14 and the Muslims confronted them, but they were able to overcome the Muslims in the end so that about 10 thousand Muslims fled into the Al-Aqsa Mosque and were crushed there in a terrible massacre before the turn of the Jews who closed themselves their synagogue The great Crusaders burned them.
One who witnessed the capture of Jerusalem wrote, "It was a massacre so massive that our men waded in blood to their ankles...Then the Crusaders rushed all over the city, taking gold and money, horses and mules, and plundering houses full of valuables."
The day after the capture of the city, Le Point says, thousands of corpses, which had already begun to decompose due to the heat, piled up and were burned by the Crusaders in huge piles. Jerusalem remained in Christian hands until it was captured by the Muslim leader Saladin in 1187.