Godfrey of Bouillon's forces scaled the northern walls on the night of July 14–15, and by morning the city had fallen. The ensuing massacre, described even by Crusader chroniclers as horrific, left streets reportedly running with blood and established a Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem that would endure for nearly a century.
The First Crusade had marched from Europe three years earlier, enduring starvation, disease, and internal squabbling to reach the walls of the holy city. When the final assault came, a Crusader named Letold was said to be the first man over the wall, and within hours the defenders' resistance collapsed entirely.
What followed shocked even hardened medieval sensibilities. Chronicler Raymond of Aguilers wrote that men rode in blood up to their bridles in the Temple of Solomon, and Jewish residents who had sheltered in a synagogue were burned alive. Muslim accounts, compiled decades later, described tens of thousands killed, though modern historians debate the exact toll.
The conquest created the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a fragile Crusader state that would be a flashpoint of holy war for generations. Godfrey took the modest title 'Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre,' refusing to be crowned king in the city where Christ had worn a crown of thorns—a rare moment of humility amid the carnage.