God's War: A New History of the Crusades

By the time Emich reached Cologne on 29 May, lessons had been learnt, local Jews having dispersed across the countryside or sought shelter from friendly Christians in the city, hoping to avoid trouble during the following weekend and Whit Sunday (1 June). The synagogue was burnt and the Torah Scrolls desecrated, but casualties among the Jews were light, the quest for booty more obvious: a wealthy Jewish woman, Rebecca, was murdered when found trying to smuggle gold and silver to her husband in hiding with a Christian family.¹⁶ The Jews who had fled the city were soon being hunted down, attacks being recorded in Neuss, Wevelinghofen and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. With the best plums picked, Count Emich and his men turned south and east, along the Main towards the Danube and Hungary. Denied entry into Hungary at Wiesselberg in mid-July, Emich discovered that thuggery and bullying cut no ice against an organized armed enemy. Settling down to an elaborate siege, Emich and his French and Swabian allies showed tactical expertise and engineering skill in constructing pontoon bridges and siege-engines but, on a rumour of the approach of King Coloman, morale disintegrated. His men beginning to flee, Emich and his knights were unexpectedly worsted by a sortie from the Wiesselberg garrison, the count only escaping because of the speed of his mount. The army dissolved; the French nobles returned west to seek other routes and new leaders; Emich went home.

The Rhineland pogroms of May did not end with Emich’s departure. Whether pursued by other bands of crucesignati or by opportunist locals, the area around Cologne continued to suffer depredations for some weeks. In June attacks spread down the Moselle to Trier and Metz, where over twenty Jews died. It was high summer, and, if not necessarily as scorching as the dry year of 1095, tempers could have frayed as hunger increased; shortages for crusaders implied shortages for the locals; prices rose in the wake of the levying of armies. A lead had been provided by Count Emich’s butchers, with their sanctimonious, bloodied aprons of righteousness. In late June and July, further attacks occurred in the Cologne region and to the north, at Xanten, Mehr, Eller and Geldern. The descriptions of the assailants are vague. In places such as Mehr, neighbours played a key role in the Jews’ ordeal. By late summer, the outbursts of hate had died away, perhaps as the harvest came in. Followers of Godfrey of Bouillon, recruited from adjacent regions, whose leader had done his own blackmailing of the Jews of Mainz and Cologne, caused no trouble; perhaps they thought the Jews had nothing left worth plundering.