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They that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in the great waters: These have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
Psalms 106: 23–24.
The Crusaders were now in Fatimid territory and passed through numerous narrow valleys en route to Jerusalem in which they could have been halted by a small detachment of troops. The failure of the Fatimids to do so or to have a relief army moving to Jerusalem seems inexplicable, given that the wazir, al-Afdal, had received a letter from Emperor Alexius stating that the Crusade was no longer under Greek control and now had, as its exclusive goal, the capture of Jerusalem. The Fatimid garrison of Ramla, the last military post before Jerusalem, obviously knew what the Franks wanted; they abandoned their posts and fled. The Crusaders reached the walls of the Holy City on 7 June.
The Crusaders did not attempt to secure the coastal city of Jaffa before striking inland to Jerusalem, despite the fact that it was impossible to hold Jerusalem without access to, and succour from, the sea. Perhaps strategy was simply abandoned in the absence of Bohemond, who had remained at Antioch, and the people’s zeal for possession of the Holy Sepulchre.
Thirteen hundred knights and 12,000 men moved quickly to an all-out assault on Jerusalem. Both the north and south walls were assaulted as early as 13 June. The Crusaders, in their fervour, did not even concern themselves with building siege towers and engines, and their first unsuccessful attack on the walls was carried out with only one ladder. They regrouped and were heartened by news that a Genoese fleet of only six ships ‘took’ Jaffa on 17 June by simply entering the harbour there and watching the port’s garrison flee. The cargo and crew of this fleet were brought to the camp and its Genoese captain was placed in charge of siege-engine production.
The Italian maritime republics did not only fight the Muslims, however. The struggles between Genoa, Pisa and Venice for dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean are a constant of the Crusades period and whilst there was certainly a degree of piety about their ventures in the Holy Land, as witnessed by the transfer of vast quantities of earth from Jerusalem’s environs by the Pisans to the cloisters of their cathedral, an effective transplanting of the land upon which The Saviour’s feet had trod, there were also hard commercial reasons for Genoa to send six armed fleets to Syria, and for Venice and Pisa to commit to the defence of Tyre, in exchange for, of course, warehouses, shares of taxes and customs duties and distinct colonies within the lands of Outremer.