The first crusader ruler of Jerusalem refused to call himself king
After the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon accepted its rule but reportedly balked at the royal title, calling himself Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre instead. He had mortgaged most of his lands to raise an army, fought across Anatolia, and lived barely a year as ruler.
Godfrey was born around 1060, probably in Boulogne, the second son of Count Eustace II, a companion of William the Conqueror who was rewarded with vast English estates, and Ida of Lorraine, an educated woman who shaped her sons' upbringing. In 1076 his childless uncle, Godfrey the Hunchback, named him heir to lands in Lotharingia. The future emperor Henry IV instead gave the ducal title to his own two-year-old son, and Godfrey spent years fending off rival claimants, among them his aunt Matilda of Tuscany. Loyal service to Henry, including campaigns in Italy, finally won him the duchy of Lower Lorraine in 1087.
When Pope Urban II called in 1095 for an expedition to aid Byzantium and seize Jerusalem, Godfrey raised cash by selling or pledging the bulk of his lands to the bishops of Liège and Verdun, then recruited a force from Lorraine reportedly 40,000 strong, joined by his brothers Eustace and Baldwin. The call also unleashed attacks on Jewish communities across Europe, including the Rhineland massacres of 1096 carried out by members of the People's Crusade.
At Constantinople the crusaders and Emperor Alexios I eyed each other warily. Alexios wanted lost territory back; the crusaders wanted the Holy Land. Godfrey swore a modified oath to return some lands. At Nicaea in 1097 the crusaders were about to storm the walls when they saw the Byzantine flag already flying, because Alexios had quietly made terms with the Turkish garrison. Godfrey helped relieve the vanguard at Dorylaeum, and some sources claim a bear badly mauled him during the march. The siege of Antioch dragged from October 1097 to June 1098 amid near-starvation.
Godfrey played a key part in capturing Jerusalem in 1099. When Raymond of Toulouse, the oldest and most experienced of the leaders, turned down the rule of the new kingdom, Godfrey accepted it and a month later beat the Fatimids at Ascalon, ending the crusade. He died in July 1100, and his brother Baldwin took the crown he had declined.
Source: Godfrey of Bouillon
