The fall of Jerusalem in 1099 to an exhausted army of Western European soldiers was one of the extraordinary events of the Middle Ages. It was both the climax of a great wave of visionary Christian fervour and the beginning of what proved to be a futile and abortive attempt to implant a new European...

The fall of Jerusalem in 1099 to an exhausted army of Western European soldiers was one of the extraordinary events of the Middle Ages. It was both the climax of a great wave of visionary Christian fervour and the beginning of what proved to be a futile and abortive attempt to implant a new European kingdom in an overwhelmingly Muslim world.