A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

lood of their own horses, and one another’s urine. Then they surrendered. Many of them agreed to
become Muslims; the others were killed. The other crusaders - the ones who had successfully
converted the Christian Greeks - marched off to avenge their colleagues, were ambushed in a valley
and virtually wiped out. Since they had their women and many children with them, they were at a
disadvantage. The Turks spared pretty girls and boys, who were carried off into slavery. Only three
thousand of the twenty-thousand army managed to fight their way into a disused castle, and held
out against besieging Turks while a Greek sailed back to Constantinople for help. The emperor sent
several men o’ war and rescued them; but once back in Constantinople their arms were taken from
them. That was virtually the end of the ‘first crusade’.
It was obvious that something more organised was required, and the following year an army led by
Godfrey of Bouillon arrived in Constantinople. The crusaders, accustomed to the discomfort of
their draughty, smoke-filled castles and rat-infested villages, surveyed this magnificent city with
envious suspicion, concluded that its inhabitants must be effete and corrupt, and were with
difficulty dissuaded by their leaders from trying to seize it for themselves. After some mutual
hostility, the crusaders were made to swear loyalty to the emperor and were packed off across the
Bosphorus. With constant skirmishes, and many deaths from heat and thirst, they struggled across
Syria and laid siege to Antioch. It fell after seven months, and the crusaders massacred every Turk
in the town. Then - their original army of thirty thousand reduced to a mere twelve - they marched
on Jerusalem and besieged it in the heat of July. Siege towers enabled them to climb the walls.
They poured into the city and began a massacre that lasted for several days. No one was spared.
The Jews of the city had taken refuge in their synagogue; it was set on fire and they all burned. As
Salomon Reinach says, with mild irony, in Orpheus, a History of Religions: ‘It is said that seventy
thousand persons were put to death in less than a week to attest the superior morality of the
Christian faith.’
In the light of history, we can see that the success of that first crusade was actually a disaster for
Europe. It convinced Christendom that the Holy Land could be turned into a kind of Papal State.
The result was that over the next two centuries there were eight more crusades, most of which
failed miserably. The original success was never repeated; but it inspired all the later efforts. When
Turks captured Edessa in 1144, Louis VII of France led a disastrous Second Crusade. In 1174, a
brilliant Arab leader named Saladin preached a jehad, or Holy War, against the Christians, and
Jerusalem was retaken in 1187. A third crusade failed to retake it, but King Richard I of England
succeeded in negotiating a truce allowing Christians access to the Holy Sepulchre - which had been
available in any case before the first crusade. The most absurd and pathetic of all the crusades was
the Children’s Crusade of 1212. A twelve-year-old shepherd boy named Stephen, from the town of
Cloyes, went to King Philip of France and handed over a letter which he claimed had been given to
him by Christ, who had appeared to him as he was tending his sheep. The king was understandably
suspicious of a letter written in modern French by a first-century Hebrew, and probably recognised
the boy as an exhibitionist or a liar; at all events, he sent him away. Undeterred, Stephen began to
preach, declaring that the sea would turn into dry land as the children approached, and that
children, supported by God, would overthrow the Saracen army. Thirty thousand children under
twelve years of age gathered at Vendöme - girls as well as boys - and, surrounded by crowds of
sorrowing parents, marched off triumphantly towards Marseilles, preceded by Stephen in a gailypainted
cart. The weather was hot; many died of thirst on the way. Those who arrived safely rushed
to the harbour to see the sea divide; when nothing happened, some denounced Stephen and turned
back towards home. Most stayed on, hoping for a miracle. After two days, two kindly merchants
offered to provide ships to take them across to Palestine. Seven vessels set sail, and the children