JERUSALEM FALLS; INHABITANTS PUT TO THE SWORD

JERUSALEM, 1099-07-16. — Jerusalem has fallen to the Frankish host, and the taking of the city has been followed by a great slaughter of its inhabitants. The walls were carried yesterday, Friday, after the besiegers brought their wooden engines against the defences. Armed men have since swept through streets, houses and places of worship, killing inhabitants as well as defenders. No trustworthy reckoning of the dead can yet be given. The conquerors possess the holy places for which they have travelled so far, but possession has come amid bloodshed whose full extent cannot be established while the city remains in the soldiers' hands.

The decisive entry was made on the northern side, where Duke Godfrey of Bouillon's men advanced a siege tower to the wall. Once a footing had been secured, further soldiers crossed and the defence began to give way. Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles had pressed the attack from the south, near Mount Zion. The assault thus threatened more than one quarter of the city, though it was the northern breach that opened the way to general entry. What began as a contest for towers and battlements became, after the resistance broke, a pursuit through the inhabited quarters within.

Many sought refuge in the precinct which the Franks call the Temple of Solomon, including the mosque of al-Aqsa. There, too, killing followed. Tancred's banner was extended as a protection to some who had gathered in that quarter, but it did not preserve all those beneath it from other men of the victorious army. The fate of these fugitives shows how little assurance a promise from one captain may afford when separate companies range through a captured city. An inhabitant who escapes the first assault may still fall to soldiers who neither recognise nor obey the protection already granted.

A different fortune has attended the Egyptian governor, Iftikhar al-Dawla, and the force holding the citadel. They obtained terms from Count Raymond and were permitted to depart towards Ascalon. Thus a strong position and a negotiated surrender have preserved men who remained under arms, while many without such means of bargaining have been killed elsewhere. The distinction is of grave consequence to those still concealed or seeking quarter. There is no single fate for the defeated: some have been slain, some taken captive, and some released under an agreement made with a particular lord.

The siege began on 7 June, when the army reached Jerusalem after its long passage through Asia Minor and Syria. The city was then held for the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, whose forces had recovered it from Turkish possession only last year. The newcomers therefore confronted a different power from the Turkish rulers against whom much of their earlier campaigning had been directed. Jerusalem's inhabitants nevertheless bore the assault that followed. The claims of distant sovereigns and the distinctions between their armies offered no shelter when the contest reached the houses and sanctuaries inside the walls.

The besiegers themselves endured severe want. Water was difficult to procure, the summer heat oppressive, and timber for the great engines had to be found and brought forward. An earlier assault failed to deliver the city. The arrival of ships at Jaffa helped supply men and materials for renewed preparations, and the host laboured upon the towers with which the final attack was made. These works turned a force unable at first to surmount the walls into one capable of bringing armed men level with the battlements. Their success has delivered the city, but not an orderly peace.

Devotion has accompanied the violence at every stage. Before the final assault, the host made a barefoot procession about Jerusalem, joining penitential observance to preparations for battle. The familiar crusading acclamation, 'God wills it,' expresses the conviction under which these men have marched. The appeal preached by Pope Urban at Clermont called upon those accustomed to fight fellow Christians to turn their weapons outward: 'Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels.' Within the victorious army, the capture is understood as the fulfilment of that sacred undertaking.

Yet thanksgiving at the Holy Sepulchre stands beside the killing elsewhere in the city. Men have gone to the shrine in prayer after taking part in the assault, bringing the pilgrim's observance into the same hours as the soldier's vengeance and pursuit of spoil. The sacred purpose asserted by the conquerors does not lessen the mortal danger confronting the conquered. Jerusalem is not merely a fortress or a destination for pilgrims. It is a dwelling-place of families, religious communities and traders, whose lives have been caught within a struggle conducted in the names of princes and faiths.

The immediate fruits of victory are being taken as booty rather than passing through ordinary exchange. Houses and their contents have become prizes of conquest; money, provisions and other possessions are in the hands of those able to seize or claim them. No sound account of ordinary trading can be offered while the sack continues. Nor is a tally of captured wealth a measure of the city's condition. For those who remain, the pressing questions are whether a dwelling can be held, whether food can be obtained, and whether a soldier's claim upon a person or property will be restrained.

The greater political settlement is still to be made. The leading princes have won Jerusalem without yet establishing an acknowledged ruler for their conquest, and their several commands do not of themselves constitute a government. Egypt remains a power beyond the walls, with Ascalon offering a place of refuge to the departed governor. The victors must therefore consider both defence against a further army and authority within the city they have taken. For the surviving inhabitants, however, those larger questions are secondary to an immediate one: whether the ending of the siege will at last bring an ending to the killing.