Appearing to have prioritised the holy war, Raymond enjoyed a groundswell of support and, for a time, he seemed to become the crusade’s acknowledged leader. He took the rather calculated step of using hard cash to ensure that his new drive towards Palestine received the endorsement of fellow princes. Not all could be bribed–Godfrey of Bouillon, for one, stood aloof–but Robert of Normandy and even Tancred now shifted their allegiance to the Provençal camp for 10,000 and 5,000 solidi (gold coins) apiece. They, and many other Christians, joined the advance south towards Lebanon.

Raymond of Toulouse’s pre-eminence now seemed assured, and it might have remained so had he continued to focus solely upon the task of reaching Jerusalem. In truth, however, beneath the appearance of simple dedication the count still yearned to create a new Provençal lordship in the East. In mid-February 1099 he committed the crusade to an unnecessary and ultimately futile siege of the small Lebanese fortress of Arqa and sought to browbeat the neighbouring Muslim city of Tripoli into submission. Officially Raymond’s excuse was that the expedition needed to pause to allow those remaining crusaders still stationed in and around Antioch, including Godfrey of Bouillon, to catch up. But even when this was achieved the count still refused to press on southwards. After two wasteful months of siege at Arqa, the masses were already restless when Raymond’s prestige was dealt a disastrous blow.

The count’s close association with Peter Bartholomew and the Holy Lance had been instrumental in securing his recognition as commander of the crusade. But as the months passed, Peter proved to be an increasingly volatile ally, given to extreme and unpredictable visionary experiences. By spring 1099 his ravings had become ever more fantastical and when, in early April, he reported that Christ had instructed him to oversee the immediate execution of thousands of ‘sinful’ crusaders, the spell broke. Not surprisingly, doubts were now openly expressed about the self-styled prophet and the relic he purportedly discovered, with the criticism spearheaded by a Norman cleric, Arnulf of Chocques, keen to reaffirm northern French influence.

Apparently convinced of the reality of his experiences, Peter volunteered to undergo a potentially lethal trial by fire to prove his own honesty and the Lance’s authenticity. He spent four days fasting to purify his soul before the test. Then, on Good Friday, before a crowd of crusaders, dressed in a simple tunic and bearing the relic of the Holy Lance, Peter willingly walked into an inferno–blazing ‘olive branches stacked in two piles, four feet in height, about one foot apart and thirteen feet in length’.

There are differing accounts of what happened next. Peter’s supporters maintained that he emerged from the conflagration unscathed, only to be fatally crushed by a fevered mob of onlookers. Other more sceptical observers described how:

The finder of the Lance quickly ran through the midst of the burning pile to prove his honesty, as he had requested. When the man passed through the flames and emerged, they saw that he was guilty, for his skin was burned and they knew that within he was mortally hurt. This was demonstrated by the outcome, for on the twelfth day he died, seared by the guilt of his conscience.

However they were inflicted, Peter Bartholomew perished from the injuries received on the day of his ordeal. His demise shattered belief in his prophecies and left the efficacy of the Holy Lance in grave doubt. It also inflicted grievous damage to Count Raymond’s reputation. Raymond tried to hold on to power, but by early May, with even his own southern French supporters clamouring for the march south into Palestine to continue, he was forced to back down, abandoning Arqa and his Lebanese project. As the Franks set out from Tripoli on 16 May 1099, the phase of Provençal domination of the crusade came to end; from now on Raymond would, at best, have to share power with his fellow princes. At last, after more than ten months of delay and disillusionment, the First Crusade began its final advance on the Holy City of Jerusalem.³³

3

THE SACRED CITY

As the last phase of the march to Jerusalem began, the First Crusaders were possessed by a new sense of urgency. Any thoughts of conquering other towns and ports on the journey through Lebanon and Palestine were abandoned, and the Franks, now driven by the determined desire to complete their pilgrimage to the Holy City, advanced with resolute speed. It was not devotion alone that drove the Frankish pace; strategic necessity also played its part. Back in the spring, during the siege of Arqa, the issue of diplomatic relations with Egypt had re-emerged when Latin emissaries sent to the Vizier al-Afdal a year earlier rejoined the expedition in the company of Fatimid representatives. Much had changed in the intervening period. Capitalising upon the tremors of fear that shook the Sunni Seljuq world after Kerbogha’s defeat at Antioch, al-Afdal had seized Jerusalem from the Turks in August 1098. This radical transformation in the balance of Near Eastern power prompted the crusader princes to seek a negotiated settlement with the Fatimids, offering a partition of conquered territory in return for rights to the Holy City. But talks collapsed when the Egyptians bluntly refused to relinquish Jerusalem. This left the Franks facing a new enemy in Palestine and a race against time. The crusaders now had to cover the remaining 200 miles of their pilgrimage with maximum rapidity, before al-Afdal could muster an army to intercept them or properly organise Jerusalem’s defences.

As they traced the Mediterranean coastline south, the crusaders’ passage was eased by the willingness of local semi-independent Muslim rulers to negotiate short-term truces, even on occasion to offer markets in which to purchase food and supplies. Cowed by the Latins’ reputation for brutish invincibility earned at Antioch and Marrat, these emirs were happy to avoid confrontation. Passing by the major settlements of Tyre, Acre and Caesarea, the Franks encountered only limited resistance and were deeply relieved to find a succession of narrow coastal passes unguarded. In late May the expedition turned inland at Arsuf, taking a direct route across the plains and up into the Judean hills. They paused only briefly when approaching Ramla, the last real bastion on the road to the Holy City, but found it abandoned by the Fatimids. At last, on 7 June 1099, Jerusalem came into view. One Latin contemporary described how ‘all the people burst into floods of happy tears, because they were so close to the holy place of that longed-for city, for which they had suffered so many hardships, so many dangers, so many kinds of death and famine’. Al-Afdal’s inaction had allowed the expedition to advance south from Lebanon in less than a month.³⁴

IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH

After nearly three years, and a journey of some 2,000 miles, the crusaders had reached Jerusalem. This ancient city, Christendom’s sacred heart, pulsated with religion. For the Franks it was the holiest place on Earth, where Christ had suffered his Passion. Within its lofty walls stood the Holy Sepulchre, the church erected in the fourth century CE under the Roman Emperor Constantine to enclose the supposed sites of Golgotha and of Jesus’ Tomb. This one shrine encapsulated the very essence of Christianity: the Crucifixion, Redemption and Resurrection. The crusaders had marched east from Europe in their thousands to reclaim this church–many believing that if the earthly city of Jerusalem could be recaptured it would become one with the heavenly Jerusalem, a Christian paradise. Feverish prophecies abounded of the imminent onset of the Last Days of Judgement centred on the Holy City, imbuing the Latin expedition with an apocalyptic aura.