Download The First Crusade (1070)

The First Crusade
After the Normans had settled in France and
conquered England, both France and England,
and also the Holy Roman Empire, were
stronger than they had been since the time of
Charlemagne. Their kings and queens began
to think, as he had, of reconquering the whole
Mediterranean and recreating the Roman
Empire. In particular, they wanted to take
Jerusalem, the city of Jesus Christ, away from
the Islamic Fatimids who were ruling it.
Clermont
In 1095 AD Pope Urban made a great speech at
Clermont (CLAIRE-mant) in southern France,
where he urged the people to take up weapons
and go fight to free Jerusalem from the rule of
the Fatimids. People were wildly enthusiastic.
Even children and old women and old men
wanted to go.
People were so enthusiastic that several groups
set off for Jerusalem before the main group was
organized. They believed that God would just
knock down the walls of Jerusalem anyway as
soon as they got there, so there was no need for
fighting or weapons. Some of them didn't even
take any money. Most of these groups found
that traveling and fighting were harder than they
had imagined, and most of them died on the way.
One group decided it was too hard to get to
Jerusalem to fight the Fatimids, and instead
stopped in Germany to fight the Jews.
Thousands of Jews were robbed and killed by
these Crusaders, just because they were not
Christians.
Finally in the fall of 1096 the main Crusade left
for Jerusalem. They went by different routes,
some by land and some by sea, to
Constantinople. Here the Emperor Alexius
was quite surprised to see them and not
altogether pleased. Would this army try to take
over his own empire? But he sent them on
towards Jerusalem. The Fatimids were still not
worried, because they thought this was just a
little
army
of
Roman
soldiers
from
Constantinople, who just wanted to fight a little
in Syria.
The Crusaders finally reached Jerusalem in May,
1098. They were surprised to see all the civilized
things in the city of Jerusalem - the Dome of
the Rock mosque, and hot baths, and advanced
Islamic medicine.
The Crusaders taking Jerusalem
The Crusaders made many mistakes in their
fighting. But the Fatimids were also fighting
with the Seljuks, so they didn't defend
Jerusalem very well. The Crusaders managed to
take Jerusalem, as well as some other important
cities along the Mediterranean coast. They
settled down there as the kings of Jerusalem, in
their own new country. Many Europeans travelled
back and forth, learning about math and
medicine from Islamic scholars, and bringing
back new foods like sugar to Europe. So the
First Crusade was a big success for the
Europeans, and a setback for the Fatimids.
Lexile® Measure
1070L
Mean Sentence Length
17.81
Mean Log Word Frequency
3.60
Word Count
463