american-holocaust

178 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSToverhead in April of 1095. Before Christ could return, however, the HolyLand had to be liberated by the Christian faithful. Thus it was-or at leastsuch was the rational~that three years after the marauding Christian troopshad laid waste the Jewish citizenry of Speyer and the other European townsand cities that lay in their path, Pope Urban's warriors for Christ foundthemselves surrounding Jerusalem, the Holy City.Preparatory to their assault the soldiers of the Lord underwent a sequenceof penitential rituals that later became routine procedure for crusadingChristian armies. In the manner of the ascetics they fasted for threedays, they confessed their sins, they received communion; and then theymarched barefoot around the walls of the city, chanting psalms, some ofthem carrying crosses and relics, in abasement before the greater glory ofGod. 93 From within the city the commander of the Muslim garrison watchedthe Christians in astonishment-but with more astonishment still whenthey suddenly began hurling themselves against Jerusalem's walls "likemadmen, without carrying a single ladder." 94 "Regardless of age or condition,"wrote the Archbishop of Tyre regarding the Muslims and Jewswhom the Christians destroyed upon entering Jerusalem,they laid low, without distinction, every enemy encountered. Everywherewas frightful carnage, everywhere lay heaps of severed heads, so that soon itwas impossible to pass or to go from one place to another except over thebodies of the slain. . . . It was impossible to look upon the vast numbersof the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, andthe very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alonethe spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directionsthat roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful wasit to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head tofoot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reportedthat within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidelsperished. 95Other eyewitness accounts of the sacking of the Holy City were equallygruesome. "Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets ofthe city," wrote the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum: amongother "wonderful sights" that testified to God's divine glory, said this observer,was the fact that the conquering Christians had "to pick [their]way over the bodies of men and horses" all throughout Jerusalem, whileat the Temple of Solomon "men rode in blood up to their knees and bridlereins." Jews who had taken refuge in the city's synagogue were burnedalive. Thousands of Muslims were chopped to death in al-Aqsa mosque.The old and the sick were the first among the infidels to meet their properend, their bodies slashed open in search of gold coins they might haveswallowed-for the Pope had decreed that any spoils of war were possessionsthe Christians could keep. Finally, the few living victims of the Cru-