1099 July 15th - The Capture Of Jerusalem

on July 15th 1099, the "crusaders" led by the general Godfrey entered Jerusalem with the sole purpose of capturing and making it a "crusader state". The crusaders used siege towers to make their invasion into the city possible. Follow the link to see a picture of these siege towers; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Grose-Francis-Pavisors-and-Moveable-Tower-Assaulting-Castle-1812.jpg/180px-Grose-Francis-Pavisors-and-Moveable-Tower-Assaulting-Castle-1812.jpg
This allowed the men or "crusaders" to capture part of the city wall and break through the defender's lines. After this tactic the crusaders then moved into capturing the Muslim governor of Jerusalem, and he was escoted out of the city by Tancred, who promised him proctection from the invaders or "crusaders", sadly the men disobeyed his orders and proceeded to slaughter thousands and thousands of Jewish and Muslim inhabitants. Jerusalem was now in the hands of the crusaders, and the war, atleast the crusaders thought, was over.

The nature of the siege of Jerusalem was of military intent as Jerusalems governor banished all Christian inhabitants and poisoned the wells in the area. This exacerbated already unstable relations between both sides. This therefore angered the crusaders which made them attack and capture Jerusalem. The nature of the crusaders was to attack and kill Jewish and Muslim inhabitants however we know that the leader Tancred, Prince of Galilee, ordered his men to stop attacking and he was ignored so we could say that it was not the leaders nature to kill thousands of inhabitants yet it was the nature of the other crusaders.

The sources we used to gather this evidence was not very helpful for us as the layout and structure of the books seemed to jump from different subjects and time periods which made it confusing and difficult to gain a full understanding of the events that actually took place and who was involved. I would not recommend to use these books to gather evidence as it would be time consuming.

Christopher Tyerman, God's War A new history of the crusades, Penguin Books,2006,978-0-140-26980-2.

Volume 3: p.764 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2003, 0-85229-961-3.

Volume 16:pp.822-40 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2003, 0-85229-961-3.

Jamie, you make some interesting points about the sources you use for your work in this post.

A few questions:
How did you use the index to help you find references to your topic?
Did you find the more narrative style of Encyclopaedia Britannica more or less useful than Tyerman's analytical style?
Which do you think is better history?
Which would you use if you were debating historical issues about the Crusades?
What, then is the compromise you make when researching, and how could you get around this in future?

Well done for your excellent efforts so far,

Mr Farndon