Godfrey of Bouillon's Reign - Episode 2: Defender of the Holy Sepulcher

Real Crusades History #29

After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the Kingdom of Jerusalem had barely begun to assume its eventual shape. Godfrey of Bouillon ruled, in the words of Christopher Tyerman, “a narrow stretch of land in Judea and Samaria running along the west bank of the river Jordan from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, including Tiberias, Nablus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron, which linked to the sea by a neck of territory surrounding the road down from the Holy City to the port of Jaffa” (Tyerman, p. 179). Godfrey’s army included some 300 knights and 2,000 infantry. Bohemond’s nephew Tancred, as Prince of Galilee, was one of his most important vassals. Tancred had captured Galilee with a meager band of knights in the summer of 1099. In the chaotic political conditions of rural Palestine, Godfrey was able to effectively control his nascent kingdom with small, tight-knit bands of troops. However, Godfrey’s Jerusalem was not fully self-sufficient, relying on aid from pilgrim knights and from the Italian naval powers. 

So just after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, Godfrey was in the position of needing to consolidate and expand the territory he held. However, as I mentioned earlier, Godfrey was short of manpower, so this was quite a challenge. 

Godfrey of Bouillon (French: Godefroy de Bouillon, German: Gottfried von Bouillon, Latin: Godefridus Bullionensis; 18 September 1060 – 18 July 1100) was a Frankish knight, and one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until its conclusion in 1099. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087. After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He refused the title of King, however, as he believed that the true King of Jerusalem was Christ, preferring the title of Advocate (i.e. protector or defender) of the Holy Sepulchre (Latin: Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri). He is also known as the "Baron of the Holy Sepulchre" and the "Crusader King". 

The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was a crusader state established in the Southern Levant by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods. The sometimes so-called First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187, when it was almost entirely overrun by Saladin. After the subsequent Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, and lasted until that city's destruction in 1291, except for a brief two decades which Frederick II of Hohenstaufen reclaimed Jerusalem back into Christian hands after the Sixth Crusade. This second kingdom is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital.