Within four years of the preaching of the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, the city of Jerusalem fell. It was the remarkable speed of the westerners' progress, above all, which ensured the successful conclusion of the expedition. Neither the Byzantines--who were, in any case, generally well disposed to the aims of the crusade, though alarmed by the unruly behaviour of many of those who took part--nor the Muslim powers of Asia Minor and Syria, were able to turn back the thousands who took up the cross and who braved extraordinary privations to reach the Holy Land. The first groups to leave, the so-called Popular Crusades led by the preachers Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans Avoir, having pillaged their way across the Balkans, arrived in Constantinople in the late autumn of 1096. They insisted on being transported across the Bosphorus to Bithynia, where they were promptly massacred by the Turks. More caution prevailed amongst the forces led by the experienced western counts who waited for the full strength of their armies to assemble in the Byzantine capital before crossing to Asia Minor. The Byzantines, too, were eager to put these battle-hardened knights to good use and, whilst the leaders of the crusade wintered in Constantinople in 1096-7, agreements to provide mutual assistance were made with many of the western leaders. Some of the western leaders may have sworn oaths of fealty to the emperor, for the Byzantines were certainly familiar with what they referred to as 'the customary oaths of the Latins'. There is little doubt, however, that Alexius made some form of agreement with Raymond of St Gilles and other Franks by which he undertook to support the crusading armies with his own forces as they crossed Anatolia on the understanding that the crusaders would return all the former Byzantine territory which they recaptured to imperial control.
The turning-point of the First Crusade was reached outside the walls of Antioch. The army besieged the city from 21 October 1097 until 3 June 1098 and then was itself surrounded by Islamic forces which had marched from Iraq. Dreadful privations afflicted those who had only recently survived the
-202-