Amid all these determined preparations both besiegers and besieged paused only to exchange morale-sapping acts of barbarism. Wooden crosses were regularly dragged up on to the city walls to be desecrated through spitting and even urination in full sight of the enraged crusaders. For their part, the Franks made a point of executing any captured Muslims, usually through decapitation, in front of Jerusalem’s garrison. During one particularly gruesome episode the crusaders took this tactic to a new extreme. Having caught a Muslim spy in their midst, the Christians once again sought to intimidate their enemy by throwing him back into the city, just as they had done with other victims in earlier sieges. But according to one Latin contemporary, on this occasion the unfortunate captive was still alive: ‘He was put into the catapult, but it was too heavily weighed down by his body and did not throw the wretch far. He soon fell onto sharp stones near the walls, broke his neck, his nerves and bones, and is reported to have died instantly.’³⁷

In early July, with the construction of their siege weapons nearing completion, the Franks received word that a Fatimid relief force was gathering, and the need to achieve a swift victory became even more pressing. In this moment of desperation, spiritual revelation served once again to bolster morale and empower the expedition with a sense of divine sanction. A Provençal priest-visionary, Peter Desiderius, now prophesied that the Holy City would succumb to an assault if the crusaders first underwent three days of ritual purification. Just as at Antioch, there followed a series of sermons, public confessions and masses. The army even made a solemn, barefoot procession around the city’s walls bearing palm fronds, although the Fatimid garrison showed little respect for this ritual, peppering the crusader ranks with arrows when they came into range. By the end of the second week of July, with their siege machines completed and their spirits strengthened by pious fervour, the crusaders were ready to launch their attack.

THE ASSAULT ON JERUSALEM

The crusaders’ assault on Jerusalem began at first light on 14 July 1099. To the south-west, Raymond of Toulouse and his remaining Provençal supporters were positioned on Mount Zion, while Duke Godfrey, Tancred and the other Latins held the plateau to the north of the city. As horn blasts called the Franks to war on both fronts, Muslim troops peering into the half-light over the northern parapet suddenly realised that they had been duped. Godfrey and his men had spent the preceding three weeks constructing a massive siege tower directly in front of the city’s Quadrangular Tower. Watching this three-storey behemoth rise day by day to a height of some sixty feet, the Fatimid garrison had naturally set about reinforcing their defences in the north-western corner of the city. This was just what Godfrey had hoped for. His siege tower had actually been built with a secret technological refinement: it was capable of being broken down into a series of portable sections and then rapidly re-erected. During the night of 13–14 July the duke used the cover of darkness to move this edifice more than half a mile to the east, beyond the Damascus Gate, to threaten an entirely new section of wall. According to one crusader:

The Saracens were thunderstruck next morning at the sight of the changed position of our machines and tents…Two factors motivated the change of position. The flat surface offered a better approach to the walls for our instruments of war, and the very remoteness and weakness of this northern place had caused the Saracens to leave it unfortified.

Having thus deceived his enemy, Godfrey’s first priority was to break through the low outer wall that protected Jerusalem’s main northern battlements, for without achieving such a breach his great siege tower could not be deployed up against the city itself. The Franks had constructed a monstrous, iron-clad battering ram to smash a path through the outer defences and now, under cover of Latin mangonel fire, scores of crusaders struggled to haul this weapon forward, all the while facing the Muslim garrison’s own strafing missile attacks. Even mounted as it was upon a wheeled platform, the ram was desperately unwieldy, but after hours of exertion it was finally manoeuvred into position. With one last mighty charge the Franks sent it crashing into the outer wall, creating a massive fissure; indeed, the ram’s momentum propelled it so far forward that the Fatimid troops atop the ramparts feared that it might even threaten the main walls, and thus rained ‘fire kindled from sulphur, pitch and wax’ down upon the dreadful weapon, setting it alight. At first the crusaders rushed in to extinguish the flames, but Godfrey soon recognised that the charred remains of the ram would block the advance of his great siege tower. So, in an almost comically bizarre reversal of tactics, the Latins returned to burn their own weapon, while the Muslims vainly sought to preserve its obstructive mass, pouring water from the ramparts. Eventually, the Christians prevailed and by the end of the day the northern Franks had succeeded in penetrating the first line of defence, opening the way for a frontal assault on the main walls.

To the south-west of the city, on Mount Zion, the Provençals enjoyed less success. This sector of Jerusalem’s walls was reinforced by a dry moat rather than a curtain wall, so over the preceding weeks Raymond of Toulouse had instituted a fixed payment of a penny for every three stones thrown into this ditch as infill, ensuring the rapid neutralisation of this obstacle. At the same time, he oversaw the construction of his own wheeled siege tower and on 14 July, in concert with Godfrey’s offensive, this colossal engine of war was deployed. Inching its bulk towards the walls, the southern French troops came into range of enemy volleys and met an oppressive torrent of Fatimid missiles. Believing that the main Frankish assault would come from Mount Zion, Iftikhar ad-Daulah had concentrated his defensive firepower in this quadrant and his men now unleashed an incessant barrage. A Latin eyewitness described how ‘stones hurled from [catapults] flew through the air and arrows pelted like hail’, while the advancing siege tower was targeted by viciously effective firebombs ‘wrapped with ignited pitch, wax and sulphur, tow, and rags [and] fastened with nails so that they stuck wherever they hit’. Having failed to reach the walls, with the onset of dusk Raymond ordered a humiliating retreat.³⁸

After a restless night of fearful anticipation for defenders and attackers alike, battle recommenced. The southern French once again set about driving forward their tower, but after some hours the intensity of the continued Muslim bombardment took its toll and the Provençal engine began to collapse and burn. With their offensive stymied, Raymond’s men fell back to Mount Zion in a state of ‘fatigue and hopelessness’. But the simple fact that Jerusalem’s garrison had faced an assault on two fronts stretched Fatimid resources, leaving the northern walls vulnerable. There, on the second day of fighting, Godfrey and his men began to make significant progress. Having breached the outer wall, they now heaved their wheeled siege tower towards this gap and the main battlements beyond. With the sky darkened by the furious exchange of missiles, the lofty edifice, packed with Franks, advanced inexorably. Casualties were appalling. One Latin chronicler recalled that ‘death was present and sudden for many on both sides’. Perched on the tower’s top storey to direct operations, Godfrey himself was desperately exposed. At one point, a flying mangonel stone practically decapitated a crusader standing at his side.