The First Crusade last three years and played a very important part in shaping Medieval
England. The overall goal of the crusade was to recapture Jerusalem, when it was captured
earlier by Muslims they made life very hard on Christians who wanted to pay a pilgrimage
to the city of Jerusalem. Christians were very angry at the Muslims and felt that they
should be allowed to enter Jerusalem.
In the year 1095 Urban spoke to a crowd of Christian supporters and urged them to start a
war against the Muslims so they could regain Jerusalem because they thought Jerusalem
was rightfully theirs. The Christians started what was called a holy war, they thought that
God would want them to fight and kill the Muslims and he would even reward them by
forgiving their sins.
The crusade was difficult as they could not cross the sea, so they had to cross over many
countries to get to their target. They even ran out of food and water and had to fight
whatever they could to replenish them. Finally in 1097 over 10,000 troops reached the
holy land with the first goal of taken over the city of Nicea which they did without much
trouble. The next target was Antioch which they recovered after seven months of battle.
The next attack was on Jerusalem in 1099 the city had high walls that proved difficult to
get over but once they did the Muslims ran away with the Crusaders killing many people
through a violent slaughter. Muslims claim the 70,000 people were killed. The city of
Jerusalem was finally recaptured by the Christians.