On this date in 1099, Crusaders from throughout Europe breached the walls of Jerusalem after a week-long siege and commenced a general slaughter of everyone in town. As many as 70,000 may have been killed, though modern scholars think the extent of the massacre was probably exaggerated by both Christians and Muslims in the centuries afterward.
The Crusade had begun more than four years before at the urging of pope Urban II (see November 27, forthcoming). Preparations to capture Jerusalem from the "Saracens" began with a wave of violent pogroms throughout France and Germany, and continued with the plundering of lands around Christian Constantinople by Crusaders hungry for supplies on their way to the Holy Land. (In the Fourth Crusade, a little over 100 years later, Constantinople would be sacked outright.)
Spiritual leaders of the pilgrims like Peter the Hermit and Peter Bartholomew believed their mission was intimately linked to the apocalypse. The conversion of Jews to Christianity, and the emplacement of a Christian Last World Emperor on the throne in Jerusalem were seen as preconditions of the rise of Antichrist and his defeat by Jesus.
