On this day 926 years ago, on June 7, 1099 (May 16, 1099 in the lunar calendar), the troops of the First Crusade began to besiege Jerusalem. Map of the Crusades On June 7, 1099, the troops of the First Crusade began to besiege Jerusalem. The First Crusade was a military campaign launched by the Western Christian world between 1096 and 1099 to recover the Holy Land of Levante occupied during the Muslim conquest, and culminated in the fall of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099. According to Christian legend, Palestine is the place where Jesus was born and ascended to heaven, and his tomb is in Jerusalem, which is regarded as a holy place. Jerusalem was the political and religious center of the Jewish people in ancient times and the capital of the Hebrew Kingdom. Naturally, it was regarded as a holy place by Jews. According to Islam, Muhammad, the Messenger of God, ascended to heaven on a horse in Jerusalem on July 17th, 622, so that day was designated as the Festival of Ascension to the Heaven by the Islamic calendar, and Jerusalem became a holy city for Muslims. In the middle of the 11th century, the rise of Seljuk Turks who believed in Islam and their western expedition complicated the situation in the Near East. They controlled almost the whole of Lesser Asia, but instead of forming a unified state, they were divided into several independent governorships, such as Roma, Mosul, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Tripoli, etc. In the 1190s, Seljuk Turks broke out in infighting and some Islamic mosques were destroyed, but pilgrims from sea could still go to Jerusalem after paying a few taxes. However, the Pope and the Holy See fabricated news that Muslims insulted western pilgrims and incited religious antagonism. At the same time, the huge Byzantine Empire was declining day by day. In 1091, a Turkic army prepared to attack Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, and the empire was in danger. The desperate Emperor Alexus I (1081-1118) had to ask the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor for help. The plight of the Byzantine Empire finally became an excuse for the feudal lords of Western Europe to launch a war of aggression. In 1095, Pope Urban II (reigned from 1088 to 1099) called for a crusade at the Congress of Clemans in France. At the end of the meeting, he delivered an impassioned inflammatory speech to the people. He counted the suffering of the Christians in the East and the "atrocities" of the Turks, and called on greedy lords, warlike knights, adventurous merchants and blindly obedient peasants to take up arms and go to the East to reclaim the Lord's tomb from the pagans. He promised that anyone who took part in the expedition would be forgiven of sins and ascend directly to heaven after death. Urban's speech was interrupted by cries of "Amen!" And "Amen!" (Hebrew, meaning only so). The impulse of religious feelings and the temptation of material interests made many classes of people in Western Europe, despite their different purposes, devote themselves to the war of conquest. The four main crusaders chose different routes of march. Originally, it was stipulated that the departure time of the Eastern Expedition was the Day of the Assumption of the Virgin, that is, August 15th, 1096, but in February of this year, a team could not wait to embark on the journey. This crusade was composed of 20,000 poor peasants, called the Peasant Crusade. They reached Asia Minor via Hungary and Byzantium. However, soon after this crusader, mainly peasant, went out, thousands of people died of illness on the way. This army was undisciplined, and it also committed atrocities of forced conversion to Christianity and killing Jews. Although the army reached Constantinople, it was slaughtered by the Seljuks in Asia Minor. Another team of crusaders organized by European nobles set off for the eastern expedition in August of the same year. In April 1097, various crusaders arrived in Constantinople successively, received supplies from the Byzantine Emperor Alexei I, and then crossed the sea into Asia Minor. In June 1097, the Crusaders captured Nicea; On July 1 of the same year, the Crusaders severely damaged the Seljuk Turks at Dorylaeum. Then, the Crusaders took advantage of the victory and marched into Syria, capturing Edessa. In June 1098, the Crusaders besieged and seized the city of Antioch. From January to June 1099, the Crusaders advanced on Jerusalem. On 7 June 1099, the Crusaders set up camp at the foot of Jerusalem. Egyptian officers in the city strengthened the city's defenses, ordered the expulsion of Christian residents, and kept the walls clear and clear the fields, waiting for assistance. In fact, the Crusaders only had 1,500 knights and 12,000 infantry, and the reinforcements available in Egypt were much larger. Without siege machinery, the Crusaders were unable to attack effectively. The general offensive on June 12 failed and suffered heavy losses. They had to build siege machines. Because Jerusalem is located in the desert, they spent several weeks traveling to Samaria to cut down timber. In July, news came that the Egyptian local army had finally set off, and now the Crusaders had only one month to capture the city. Now it was time to exercise religious power. After the priests claiming to have received a divine message from the dead Bishop of Ahimal, they ordered the whole army to fast. On July 8, the whole army began to walk around the walls with solemn steps, wearing the white cloth shirts of repentants, singing hymns. The Muslims in the city had never seen such a scene before and laughed. After *, the crusaders ascended the Mount of Olives and listened to the sermon of Peter the Hermit. In the next two days, the Crusaders built three siege towers, advanced their positions, and began to bombard the city walls. On the night of the 13th, the siege began again. After a day and a half of fierce fighting, at midnight on the 15th, in the north, they built a bridge from the tower to the city wall. After they captured a section of the wall, the people at the foot of the city set up ladders. They opened the Gate of the Column and went straight to the Dome of the Rock, where they accepted the surrender of the Egyptian officers and hung the Crusader flag on the top of the mosque. In the south, however, the Crusaders were still fighting bitterly, and the fierce battle lasted until late in the night. After that, the massacre began, and the commanders lost control of the army. After days of fasting, religious rendering, and bloody battles, the Crusaders had gone into madness. They kill pagans when they see them, and rob property when they see them. A large number of Muslims gathered in mosqueofal-Aqsa to take refuge. On the morning of the 16th, a group of Crusaders broke into the door and killed all the refugees. The Jews hid in the synagogue and were also set on fire. On the 17th, order was finally restored to the city, because the generals controlled the troops and all the Muslim and Jewish residents were killed. The Christian inhabitants had previously been expelled, leaving the conquerors with only an empty city. The First Crusade established four "Crusader States": the Kingdom of Edesab, the Duchy of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Tripoli in Palestine. Countries such as the Kingdom of Cilicia Armenia composed of Armenian refugees also became allies of the Crusaders. The First Crusade was a Christian response to the expansion of Muslim power, and in the next two hundred years, the Second to the Ninth Eastern Expeditions came one after another. At the same time, the Eastern Expedition also indirectly reopened the international trade that had declined since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.