Earlier that year, envoys of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I had asked the pope for military help. Speaking in a field outside the city to a crowd of clergy, knights and commoners, Urban urged Western knights to stop fighting each other and to fight instead to free Christians in the east and Jerusalem itself. Those who went would receive remission of their sins. The crowd reportedly answered "Deus vult!" ("God wills it!"). Four years later crusaders captured Jerusalem.
The Council of Clermont, which met from November 17 to 27, 1095, dealt mostly with church reform. On its last day, Urban, a Frenchman, addressed a large audience assembled in a field because no church could hold them. No text of the speech survives; four chroniclers wrote versions years later, each with different emphases, describing atrocities against Christians in the east and promising spiritual rewards.
The response was stronger than Urban expected. Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, was among the first to kneel and take the cross, and the pope made him his representative on the expedition. Men sewed cloth crosses onto their clothes. Over the following months Urban toured France preaching the expedition, and popular preachers such as Peter the Hermit raised much larger, disorganised crowds.
The first of these, the People's Crusade, set off in spring 1096 and was destroyed in Anatolia; on the way, some bands massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland. The main armies of knights left later that year. After a long siege, they took Jerusalem in July 1099 and killed many of its inhabitants. Urban died two weeks later, before news of the capture reached Rome.
Key people: Pope Urban II, Alexios I Komnenos, Adhemar of Le Puy